"... a group of Christian women headed into the Old City to view the remains of their family home. The Christian minority is generally effusive about the “liberation” of an area central to their ancient identity. “The Army has swept away all of the bad people from our city,” said Hannan Ragap, 45, a mother of two who sported spike heels and jeans as she walked toward the Old City. In the adjacent Zahra district, people were savoring a victory against what many view as an existential threat from a radical Islamist force. The neighborhood is home to many Alawites, the Muslim sect whose members include President Assad. “They wanted to force us out, but we refused to leave,” said Alabdallah, the engineer who is in charge of the neighborhood “martyr’s” cemetery, with more than 2,000 graves, and is helping take down the sniper barriers, some as high as 30 feet."
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The LA Times seems to have noticed that there are people in Syria who support the government. Alawites, Christians, Shia and a lot of Sunni adhere to the existing government as opposed to the Saudi financed jihadi extremists who have now been defeated in the Old City of Homs. N.B that the piece of the larger city of Homs that is called the "Old City" is a fairly small part of the larger whole. In spite of this the jihadi cheerleaders whom we seem to think of as honest journalists have persistently photographed the destruction in the Old City as though it was all of Homs.
Now we see peace in the city of Homs and the beginning of reconstruction. If what happened in Beirut after their civil war is an indication, rebuilding will proceed quite rapidly. There is a lot of Syrian money overseas in Europe as well as in Lebanese banks and it will return. Palestine is an example of expatriated capital that quickly is repatriated whenever there is hope of renewal. The Ramallah skyline speaks volumes in spite of Israel's best efforts to inhibit growth.
And then, there is the article cited below from "The National," a UAE publication. In this piece the author insists that Assad will not only win the coming presidential election but theat he would win in any honest election.
It seems to be that the Saudis, and the Likudnik crowd in the US have badly misjudged the strengths if their extremist friends. The Obama Administration? Oh, well... pl
http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-syria-homs-bashar-assad-20140512-story.html
http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/comment/syrias-dirty-secret-is-that-assad-could-win-in-a-fair-election
